Remus Lupin Died Today
by Aeli Kindara
Summary: James muses on the death of Remus Lupin, a boy he shared a dorm with but never really knew. (AU, and NOT slash, if that was what you were thinking.)


**Disclaimer: **I don't own the world of Harry Potter. It belongs to J. K. Rowling and is protected by copyrights.

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Remus Lupin died today.

Those words — I can't get them out of my head. A boy I knew is dead. A boy I will never know is dead.

Remus Lupin died today.

No one knew him, not really. He was quiet, too quiet. Most of the time, we didn't even know he was there. And we didn't care.

Now he's dead.

Why? I keep asking myself that. Why is he dead? I know the answer, but somehow the question is still repeating itself endlessly in my mind. Why?

Dumbledore told us. He told the whole school — but first he told us. We were the ones who found him, after all. Me, Sirius, and Peter. We were the ones who saw him falling from the astronomy tower. We were the ones who watched, and couldn't do a thing about it.

That was yesterday. He held on, for nearly a full day — but now he's gone.

Remus Lupin died today.

Dumbledore looked seriously at us over the bed in the hospital wing, the bed where he lay for the last hours of his life. He told us everything — that Remus Lupin was a werewolf. That he had suffered more in his life than any of us could imagine. That he had been scared to death to come to Hogwarts. Dumbledore told us how much he had hoped that the boy could find friends here — that he could have a normal life, to some extent.

Unfounded hopes.

He told us not to blame ourselves, but how could we not? We shared a dorm with him — if we had just reached out, pulled him into our little group, given him something worth living for — he might be alive. But we didn't.

And he isn't.

I can't even begin to fathom what his life has been — what lycanthropy has done to him. I could never imagine something that could be terrible enough to make someone want the end to come. But he did.

It wasn't an accident, you know.

Remus Lupin killed himself.

He killed himself because life had nothing left for him — only pain and loneliness. He killed himself because death couldn't possibly hurt more than life.

A girl died last year, a sixth year Ravenclaw. Her family was murdered. There are rumors of a Dark Lord, someone who has ordered all the mysterious killings that have been going on in the past few years — including hers.

When she died, the halls were silent for days. Other sixth years sat like statues in the corridors, holding onto each other and sobbing, not going to classes, not caring. One of them was dead.

And the rest of us? Those of us who hadn't even known her, who had only seen her in passing? We were silent, numb with shock. We went to our classes, but very few of the teachers could handle teaching. Some of them just dismissed their classes as soon as we came in. So we drifted, silent in respect for the grief of the upperclassmen, back to our common rooms, perhaps, or to the library, or outside to the lake.

Later that week, a memorial service was held in the Great Hall. Many of her friends and teachers stood to speak, about what a wonderful person she had been, about the love she had shared with her friends. So many people had been close to her.

No one was close to Remus Lupin.

There was no one sobbing in the corridors today. Classes went on as usual. There was a lot of flurried whispering, exchanges of rumors — but there were no tears. No one cried for Remus Lupin.

Just a few hours ago, Dumbledore rose at dinner to give a speech about Remus Lupin's death. He was the only one. No teachers, no classmates. No one knew him.

We should have been up there — we should have stood to speak. We should have been his friends, his close friends. We should have been the ones who sat in the cold stone corridors and cried for him.

But we weren't. We were the ones who walked numbly around the school, who stared in shock and did not speak. Our grief for our own roommate was no more than it had been for a girl we didn't know.

And everyone else? Those who had known him even less than we had? They only whispered wide-eyed rumors to each other, fascinated by the strange death of another student. Some of them even snickered beneath their hands. Most of them carried on their lives, indifferent to his passing. They aren't werewolves; it could never happen to them, so they could care less that a fellow student is gone forever.

Remus Lupin died today.

And no one shed a tear.

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**A/N:** I've had this in my head for a while, but I was thinking of it as more of a narrative and that wasn't really working out. I was listening to music (Simon & Garfunkel, if you wanted to know) and suddenly the line 'Remus Lupin died today' popped into my head, and I knew that was how I wanted to start. This is obviously AU; it takes place in what would have been the Marauders' second or third year, I'm not sure which. Katrina Stinson, the Ravenclaw sixth year who died (yes, I know I didn't put her name in the actual story), is based on Mathias Bartels, a boy from my school who died nearly a year ago. Mathias, we never knew each other except by vague association of face and name, but you will always hold a place in my thoughts. Rest in peace.

If you've gotten this far, please review. Tell me it's wonderful, tell me it's awful, tell me it's anywhere in between — I'll be happy, just because I'll know that you read it. You can just type 'l' if you want to, and it will make me happy. If you review this, I'll review a story of yours — shameless, I know, but I'm desperate. Please review?


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